The story of us - part 3 - Our Sarah and Jacob

5 years gone by: Saying Hello and Goodbye to Sarah and Jacob

Coincidentally this is my 200th post, and I wish it was something fun I could post about. But my head is just not there right now.  Its with my heart and that is with the memory of my sweet Sarah Jane and Jacob Robert.
5 years ago (I can't believe that it has been 5 years)  they came  into this world too early and left it way too soon.  I am writing our story as much for me as for  anyone that reads it.  When you have children that are gone all you have left is what lives in you and the more I am able to let that out of myself I feel like I keep a part of them always here.  With that said...

Can you imagine how excited we were to be pregnant with twins?  After Joshua died, I was not sure that I would ever want to be pregnant again.  Over time, I realized that  I had more love in my heart for other children and really I could not imagine myself not mothering someone.  So, we tried again that next year and we found out we were having twins on June 8th, our 6 week ultrasound.  Everyone was so excited.  We were excited and terrified, which is a very hard emotional combination.  The Drs. reassured us that all the precautions would be taken and pretty much immediately I was put out of work on modified bed rest.  Actually it sounds terrible to be put on bed rest so early in a pregnancy, but let me tell you, I would have stood on my head for this pregnancy to work out.   And I had terrible morning sickness (at all times of the day) and wacky blood sugar dips that made me feel faint a lot, so it was good that I was able to rest when I needed it.

I felt very pregnant very fast.  That was good, I needed the reassurance that all was well, and the more symptoms I had the better.  We celebrated our 4th anniversary watching our babies' heartbeats on ultrasound.  It was wonderfully sweet.  When I was 12 weeks, the cervical cerclage (stitch) was put in.  This was supposed to keep my cervix from opening too soon. At 17 weeks, we found out that Baby A was a girl and Baby B was a boy!  My Mom and Aunt were in the room too to hear the good news, and they were so excited too.

There is a story behind why I wanted Sarah to be our baby girl's name.  You see, Sarah was my Confirmation name.  I chose that name because my Grandma was my Confirmation sponsor and she loved the name.  She said that she always wanted to name a girl 'Sarah', but her own mother (my great-grandmother) did not like the name, so she never used it.  The sad part of that is that my Grandma has 7 daughters, obviously she named none of them Sarah.  I have known my first daughter would be Sarah since I was 14 years old.  Sarah - in honor of my Grandma.  And Jane was my Great Aunt (my Grandma's sister) that I love dearly, so Sarah's middle name was an homage to her.  Jacob's name was more of a challenge.  We could not agree on a boy's name so that took some work to figure out what our Baby B would be named.  We found Jacob and loved it.  His middle name, Robert, is also Tom's middle name and both my Dad's and my father in law's name.  Yes, a lot of Roberts in our families (there are even more - my brother, my grandfather, Tom's uncle - a lot!)

I never realized then how important it would be that we named our babies and began referring to them by their names right then.  It gave me even more of a sense of closeness, like I really knew these babies (beyond them living inside me).  That would be so important later.

September 18th was a Saturday.  The night before I had been very restless and just didn't feel right.  That morning we called labor and delivery because I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.  They told us to come on in and they would take a look.  I was a few days more than 20 weeks at the time.  On the way into the hospital the contractions began.  I kept telling myself this could not be happening.  I was just over tired, dehydrated, worried, stressed, something - anything - just not in labor.  They took me right in when we got there and right up to the L+D.  I went in to use the bathroom before they did the ultrasound and that's when the panic really began - my water broke.

To say that I totally freaked out would be a gross understatement.  We found out that the bag of waters broke around Sarah, but Jacob's was still intact.  The stitch to hold my cervix shut was the ONLY thing holding my cervix shut.  And I was in active labor.  Shit. (sorry, but that's the best word right now)
I began the Magnesium sulfate then and stayed on that, on complete bed rest for the next 3 days.  We were able to stop the labor and I was allowed to move to an ante-partum room.  I was to remain there until the babies were born, hopefully we could put that off as long as possible.  I was on a lot of antibiotics to keep infection at bay which is really common once your water is broken.  And once the infection is there, they will no longer stop your labor because of the risk of uterine rupture. 

We had seen on ultrasound that Sarah had very little water around her, but that she was making more water all the time and was still able to move and breathe okay, so we had hoped to buy just a few more weeks so that they could safely come into this world as preemies, but preemies with a chance of survival.  I was realistic, I knew I was not going to make it to 30 weeks or something like that.  I just please needed a few more precious weeks, just that much more time.  That was not to be.  Around 8:00 on the night of the 22nd ( Wednesday) I started having contractions again, only this time I also was running a fever. 

My husband is a rock.  A fricking rock.  Watching him yell at the nurses and basically order them to help me and the babies was awful for me to watch.  You see, I got it.  I understood what they were saying.  I didn't like it, but I got it.  They couldn't stop it - they wouldn't stop the labor this time because of the infection.  God, I love my husband more than I can ever express and I will never forget having to hold his face in my hands and explain this horrible circumstance to him.  He just did not want to believe that there was nothing to be done.  We called our families and tried our best to prepare ourselves for what lie ahead of us that night. 

Pain.  Physical pain that is so intense and you cannot reason your way out of it thinking "well, at least I will have my baby at the end, this will be all worth it."  Because you won't.  There will be no happy ending to this labor and you know that from the get go.  Does it make the pain worse?  I'm saying that it made the pain worse for me.  I spent the entire night writhing in pain waiting for the inevitable to happen.

Early Thursday morning, the 23rd of September, it was time to push.  The neonatal staff was there to evaluate the babies as they were born to determine if they were going to be able to help the babies.  At 7:10 am, Sarah Jane was born and weighed 12 ounces.  At 7:15 am Jacob Robert was born weighing 15 ounces.  Dr. C came over to tell us that the babies were too small for them to assist and asked if we wanted to hold them. 

Tom and I held our babies wrapped together in their blanket and poured every bit of love we had on them.  We looked all over their little perfect bodies and memorized their features.  Kissed their faces and told them all the ways that they were loved.  They spent their short lives completely enveloped in all the love that we could give them and our family could give them.  We had them baptized there in the room with us and our family.  Words cannot describe what having that time with Sarah and Jacob meant to us, I will always have wanted more, will always want more, but...  Precious, precious time that I am forever grateful for. 

Our lives were touched by these two beautiful children and our hearts were forever imprinted with their spirits.  The obituary in the paper says that they were "born and became angels on September 23rd, 2004"  and there are no words that could be more fitting.  On this day, what would have been their 5th birthday our Angels Sarah and Jacob are especially loved and remembered.  May they be enjoying  heavenly bliss with their brother Joshua on their birthday. 
We love you and miss you our Angels.

The story of us - Our life and times with Joshua

Our life and times with Joshua

(note: not only is this very long, but it is very emotional ,both for me to have written, but probably also to read. Maybe not a good read for at work ,etc.)

“You can try again”

Well, that is easier said than done. We were terrified to try again and at the same time, we really wanted to have a baby. I really wanted to have a baby. Shortly after our housewarming party in November of 2002, we found out we were expecting again on December 5th. (I actually know the exact date of conception, but I won’t go into details hereJ, my family reads this blog too) Talk about crazy. I was so paranoid and worried and excited and trying to be hopeful that I was driving myself crazy! (And probably Tom, too) Our due date was August 13, 2003 and that seemed like forever!

We made it to about 9 ½ weeks uneventfully. Then one night, while Tom had run out to the store for something I had a sudden bout of bleeding. I totally freaked. It was just a rush of blood, kind of like a pop and there was bleeding and then it stopped very quickly. We went to the ER per our Dr’s instructions and after waiting until the wee hours of the morning with no more spotting we decided to go home and go to our own Dr. first thing in the morning to get an ultrasound.

You see, at 9 ½ weeks, you are still in the first trimester and therefore you do not get to go to Labor and delivery, but to the regular ER. There you wait and are monitored, but if you are miscarrying they cannot stop it and so they just make sure you have no other, more serious symptoms. And you are not the priority for the ultrasound machine, so you could wait a really long time for someone to come down to take a look to see if your baby is still okay. It’s a pretty crappy system from my point of view.

The next morning we woke up and immediately went to the OB’s office, thinking the worst and hoping the best. On ultrasound our little bean was moving all over and had a wonderfully strong heartbeat! Whew. What the bleeding was was a subchorionic hematoma – a small pocket of blood or clot that develops between the folds of the placenta and the uterine wall. Some resolve on their own and some will cause bleeding, most often it is not a really big problem in the first trimester and the Dr. just watches to make sure the placenta is still attached fine. That was what happened to me. They just watched, put me on bed rest for a while and then everything seemed okay.

On March 26^th, 2003, it seemed like I may be losing my mucus plug. No, I was only about 18-19 weeks along, that couldn’t be happening. One call to the OB and they would clear this up. They said to come in immediately. Do not delay. Tom and I rushed back to Flint (where the OB was and closer to where we lived) from Lansing (where we both worked). That was a pretty stressful drive. Upon taking a look at my cervix, the Dr. asked Tom to take a look too. What?! Ewww. But he did it and the Dr. explained that what he was looking at was my bag of water bulging out of my dilated cervix! We were to go to the hospital immediately – lying on my back in the backseat – they were calling ahead to let them know we were on our way. They did an emergency cerclage (sewed my cervix shut) that was not quite successful and I ended up dilated again and in the hospital on strict bed rest.

So, we were just trying to buy some time for our little peanut now. We needed to keep him/her in me for as long as possible, and since I was not in active labor but just dilated, the plan was to keep me on my back and hope for the best. We got a visit from the neonatologist and he told us that we needed to get to at least 23 weeks, they could not intervene for the baby until after that point. They would transfer me by ambulance to the hospital with the NICU when I was almost 23 weeks. He also told us all the scary complications that could happen for the baby, the extent of what they could do and tried to give us some hope that we could have a healthy outcome for our little one. It was way overwhelming to say the least. I made it to the almost 23 week mark, and on a Monday, April 14^th I was transferred to Hurley. I wouldn’t be on the antepartum unit very long.

On that Friday night, the 18^th, I started having contractions after dinner. After a pattern became apparent they moved me to the labor and delivery unit to try to stop the labor. I can honestly tell you that what they do to stop the labor is nearly as bad as the labor itself. Anyone who has been on magnesium sulfate will attest to that. I was now 23 weeks and 3 days pregnant.

After hours of trying to stop the labor, it was obvious that not only was that not working, but I was showing signs of infection , was dilated completely and the baby had moved into the birth canal. It was not going to be stopped and this baby was coming.

Here’s where my memory becomes spotty. I remember noticing at one push that there was A LOT of people in the room. A LOT, like 20 maybe. One of the nurses was wearing rabbit ears, this was Easter weekend. I do remember a lot of pain, and some really gory details that need not be shared. But at 3:39 am that Saturday morning, our baby was born and Tom clearly shouted to me, “I think I saw that it’s a boy!”

Joshua Thomas was born at 3:39 am on Saturday, April 19^th, 2003. He weighed 1 lb. 6 oz. and was 11 ¼ inches long. He was the smallest baby in the NICU at that time, called a micro preemie. But to us he was perfect, small, but so perfect. He had my nose and Daddy’s hands and feet.

How do I start to tell you how much I love this boy? How much I wanted this boy? How I adored every second that I spent with him? This small little guy was our very existence for the time he was with us. I spent everyday (minus one day that I thought I might be sick and did not want to risk taking any germ to him) at his bedside. Sometimes I talked to him, sang to him, or held his hand. Sometimes I just sat in the chair and rocked and stared at him. Often I cried, for both happy and sad reasons. Oh how I loved this beautiful creature that was mine, a part of me. I would leave when the unit closed to visitors and return with Tom later in the day. This was my life. He was my life at that time.

Joshua had good days. Days where we got to change diapers or ooh and aah over his yawns, stretches and grimaces. The best days were when he was doing so well that we could hold him. That was heaven, absolute heaven. I spent my first mother’s day and my 29^th birthday in the bliss that was Joshua. We got to show him off and share loving on him with his grandparents, his great-grandma, aunts, and uncles. I never knew that one little boy could bring me so much joy and pride.

Joshua also had his bad days. Days where scary things happened, things we could not fix, but could just stand by and watch others try to fix. That’s one of the really hard parts of him being in the hospital, there was so much we could not do for him and everyday we had to leave him there, entrusted to someone else’s care. There were days when we were sure we would lose him. We called our family to come and somehow he would pull through. It was not only physically exhausting, but emotionally horrendous. We had Joshua baptized in the NICU on one of those bad days that turned around. It was so special to have our family there and have him blessed. I am so glad that we did that.

We watched other babies come and go - big, fat round babies who had been there but a few hours and babies that had been there for a long time before we were. Joshua had a tag on his bed that said “I’m Tiny, but Tough” and was he ever. We were prepared for the long road that lay ahead. The long road that would be healing and catching up for Joshua, as long as he was with us we were willing to work through anything.

At the beginning of June, Joshua began to show signs of a bowel perforation; he had surgery to repair it, but was really struggling to heal. He had become septic. We spent many nights there in the hospital, wanting to be close for him and for us. On the morning of June 9^th I got the call we had been dreading. My mom rushed me to the NICU and Tom rushed back from work. When I got there I was told there was no more that could be done. We had thought it was the end before, but this time I could feel it, I knew. I held my baby close, told him I loved him, and stroked his hair. When Tom arrived, we had them remove all the tubes and wires and we just held Joshua, for the first and only time, with nothing in the way. In a private room, we wrapped him in his blanket from home and told him all the things we needed to say. We said goodbye. Our families said goodbye. To say this was a defining moment in my life does not do it justice. And yet, we had no preparation for this, we were feeling our way through this profound, important experience. You can’t prepare for this.

That day and the days that have followed have been incredibly difficult. We had his funeral; Tom spoke and read this beautiful story he had written of our baby boy. My dad’s friend, a wonderful singer/songwriter, sang for the service and we all joined in as he sang ‘You are my sunshine’ to him at the end of the service. That was our song. He was cremated and his ashes are with us, kept in a special place in our bedroom.

The abyss that I sank into after Joshua’s death lasted for a while. I thought I would never emerge, maybe that I never wanted to emerge, but we had a lot of great support from our family and friends, and a great grief therapist that helped both Tom and I through.

And time. It takes time. Lots of time.

There are days still that I am a mess, days that I am so sad for him that I cannot function properly, but those days are less frequent. I will always be a bereaved mother, I will always have a son that died and I will always mourn his loss. I am crying now as I write this, I think these tears will always come. This part of my life affects my everyday existence and yet, if I had to do it all again, even knowing how it would end up, I would give anything to do over those 7 weeks and 2 days that I had with my sweet baby Joshua.

I could go on and on forever with stories about Joshua, our time with him, and the grief that we continue to experience, but I hope this gives you a snapshot into one of the happiest and saddest times in our lives. And maybe gives a clearer picture of who we are and our struggle with ‘infertility’, infant loss and bereavement, things I know many of you in the blogging world have also experienced. Our story continues…

Coming Next: Saying Hello and Goodbye to Sarah and Jacob

The story of us - in the beginning

How can you really connect with someone if you don’t know their story, where they are coming from? Here is our story. How our family came to be in the place that we are today. I have said many times that I am not the person I was 10 years ago. I am changed. I have been blessed and cursed. My life has not always gone as I had planned or wanted, but how can I wish the past away without it taking away what I have and what I am now. Anyway, here is my attempt at letting you in on our story of pregnancy, loss, our road through gestational surrogacy, and our finally found happiness.

My goodness, where to begin…

I have always known. Always known that I would be a Momma one day. I am the oldest child and oldest grandchild on both of my parents’ sides. That’s the oldest of 29 grandchildren total. I was the one left in charge, I was the one left to look out for the others. I was forever around little kids, babysitting, working in day cares, becoming a nanny, etc. My degree has an early childhood focus; my jobs have had that focus too. So, it was a given. Everyone knew I would be the one having a flock of children.

I met my best friend and who I truly believe I am forever intended to be with in December of 1998. Tom and I just clicked, it was comfortable and right from the beginning. I was totally in love. He was it for me. Tom moved to Frostburg, Maryland to begin working on his master’s degree and I was miserable without him. So, after I promised my Mom that I would not buy property or get pregnant while I was there, I moved there too. Tom proposed December of 1999 and obviously I said yes. We were married back here in Michigan on July 8, 2000. It was beautiful, we were so happy, and in hindsight, we were so blissfully unaware of what challenges may lay ahead. It was a great time.

Tom finished his degree and we moved back to Michigan in April 2001. Babies had been our plan just as soon as we were back in MI. I had stopped the pill in January and begun the prenatal vitamins in preparation. So I was more than ready to get that plan moving. We were both just newly at our jobs and decided to give it a little time before we started trying. Our first positive pregnancy test came in August that year. To say we were excited is really an understatement. We were on top of the world! We told everyone right away and we basked in the glow of it all!

Tom’s Mom had been battling cancer for some time and this summer had been her worst time of all. In late August we got the call that she was in very bad shape and hospice had been called in. Tom and I rushed to see her and it was clear that she was not going to make it through the night. She passed that night and the loss was profound. Tom was devastated and I did my best to be there for him. We felt glad that she knew we were pregnant, that she had some happy news so near the end. Little did we know that only a short time later even more bad news would come.

I began spotting and then bleeding at about 7-8 weeks along. Tests confirmed that I was indeed miscarrying. It was a terrible nightmare. I was told to go home and let it happen naturally. Naturally? Are you kidding? There was nothing about this that felt natural. I had to keep going in for blood tests so that they could watch my HCG (pregnancy hormone) levels come down. That was torture in and of itself.

“Oh, excuse me what are you here for? Why do you need your blood drawn again?” Every time, I had to explain.

The doctor said we could try again as soon as we wanted, it was an early loss and nothing suggested that there were problems. And besides, you have to have 3 miscarriages to get any real testing done anyway. Go home – procreate.

We handled it the best we could. I cried, Tom was upset and supportive. Then we got right back on the baby making wagon after a couple of months. My want for a child had only increased, but I will say that my blinders were off. No longer was I the blissful, oblivious woman I had been. I was jaded. I had been badly hurt and I was going to be more careful and aware this time around.

When we found out we were pregnant again, we told NO ONE. Not a soul. We could tell after the 1^st trimester was done and everything was okay. At 10 weeks, I could hold it no longer and told my friend, Amy. She was happy and excited for us. I started to feel good. Not long after that, the spotting began. Now we were going to our real OB/GYN (not the family doc from before) and when they saw us they reassured us that these things happen and often the pregnancy is fine. The “let’s just take a look” ultrasound would prove that to be wrong. The baby had stopped growing at 6 weeks. And because my body had not begun the process of taking care of the miscarriage on its own, I would need a D+C.

So began the process of telling people. It was surgery, I had to tell people. I remember distinctly my Mom’s reaction. Of course she was upset about the baby, but she told me that she wished she would have known from the beginning. She said that she wanted to enjoy the happiness from the start even if something happened, it was too hard to only get to hear the bad news. From then on, my Mom would always be told, I would never leave her out again.

Recovery this time was a bit harder. I dreamed about the little spirit that we had lost, I dreamed about what he or she would have been like. I longed for the feeling of morning sickness again. My emotions were raw and I was scared this was never going to happen for us. The thought of not having children was not even fathomable for me, just beyond my realm of thinking. It just had to happen.

In May of 2002, we bought our house and just before we closed we found out we were pregnant again, so many new beginnings. Which room would be the baby’s? Again, our hopes were dashed by what seemed to be the inevitable spotting, and then bleeding that would come.

Three, now we had had three. Three is the magic number. The number that all the docs look at as signifying “oh, now there could be a problem”. In some ways I get why they wait to see if you have recurrent miscarriages. I have read the statistics about how many women miscarry, some not even knowing that they had been pregnant at all (so how do they count these women who didn’t even know, huh?), then go on to normal healthy pregnancies. So, yes, logically I get it. It would be really expensive to do testing on every woman who has 1 miscarriage. BUT, logic hardly plays a part when you are the one having the miscarriage/ miscarriages.

I was broken, emotionally and physically. I wanted the physical part to be fixed. I knew that my heart would never be the same, no one could give our babies back to me, but I at least wanted my body to do what it was supposed to do. There were a lot of tests trying to find something to fix. A LOT. By the end of October of that year, we had the answer.

“Unexplained Recurrent Miscarriages” – nothing definitively wrong with me.

“You can try again. Take a baby aspirin everyday and some progesterone lozenges and we’ll see what happens.” Not long after, that’s what we did.

Coming Next: Our life and times with Joshua